Media moguls mix business, pleasure at summer camp

Dan Cox

4 Min Read

<p>Rupert Murdoch, chairman and CEO of News Corp, arrives at the 26th annual Allen &amp; Co conference in Sun Valley, Idaho July 8, 2008. The deteriorating U.S. economy and slumping stock prices will frame discussions among top media and technology executives at the conference. REUTERS/Rick Wilking</p>

SUN VALLEY, Idaho (Hollywood Reporter) - Several hundred major media executives at Herb Allen’s annual retreat in this remote Northwest niche thought they could get away from it all, including Hollywood’s labor strife 900 miles. But they were at least partially wrong.

The Screen Actors Guild, engaged in drawn-out contract talks with the studios, took out a full-page ad in the local Sun Valley paper, the Idaho Mountain Express, that said simply:

“Unfortunately for SAG, we don’t see that newspaper up here,” said Stringer. “It’s not delivered to us.”

Time Warner president and CEO Jeff Bewkes was equally noncommittal about the ad. “Good for SAG,” he said when handed a copy.

Bewkes clearly had other things on his mind here, including one or another possible deal in the making, with takeover target Yahoo being talked up the most.

And in fact, despite the faint echoes of the actors’ woes heard up here, the incessant hum of the conference centers very much on what will happen with Yahoo -- and its on-again, off-again suitor Microsoft. A number of the parties to the discussion are said to be en route.

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, who is due to arrive in Sun Valley on Thursday, already rejected a $33-per-share bid from Microsoft in May. He was holding out for $37. The stock slid 3.3 percent to $23.82 on the Nasdaq Wednesday.

Carl Icahn, the billionaire investor and indefatigable scourge of corporate incompetents, also is bruited to be headed to Sun Valley. Icahn owns about 4 percent of Yahoo, which he reportedly bought for $25 a share. He’s been pushing for a sale of the company and the ouster of some members of its board.

Gordon Crawford, who runs Yahoo’s largest investor Capital Research Global Investors, has been steering clear of reporters at Sun Valley, but scuttlebutt is he will be huddling with Microsoft dealmaker Henry Vigil and non-executive chairman Bill Gates -- who arrives Friday -- to discuss the various scenarios.

In other news from Sun Valley on Day 1, Allen’s little secret of his guest speaker inadvertently leaked out when a photographer noticed the organizers raising a Jordanian flag.

As soon as journalists began putting two and two together, Allen’s people hastened to take the flag down. But it was too late to hide the fact that Jordan’s King Abdullah was on his way to make a presentation.

Apart from trying to avoid talk of a potential Hollywood strike or giving away anything substantive to the two dozen journalists staking out the event, the top-flight executive phalanx that has shown up so far has variously indulged in rubber rafting, golf, cycling, meeting up for talks and whooping it up at night.